Published with support from Campus Progress/Center for American Progress (online at CampusProgress.org)

Letter

Locations

This is my last issue as president of The
Yeti. While it’s been a series of lessons in
management and journalism, it’s also been a
blast to work with some of the most spirited
progressives on campus. I hope to remain
a force in that community, while stepping
aside and passing the torch to Virgina
Kotzias. I wish the new staff the best of luck,
and I know that The Yeti will continue to
improve as time goes by.
I had the enlightening experience of
travelling to New Orleans over this past
Spring Break. While its tourism board tries
its hardest to project an image of recovery,
those attempts were lost on my party. You
see, we camped outside of town and had
to drive through the Ninth Ward each day to
and from the city. My observations about
that irony are in this issue.
As well, I felt that, with my last issue, I
should address possibly the most important
moral issue of today’s world: the continuing
genocide in Darfur. With the help of Jenna
Citron of Student Darfur Awareness Group,
The Yeti hopes to bring attention to this
outrageous ongoing situation. A letter is
included for you to cut out and mail to
your representative. Please take this
opportunity to affect change.
Always remember: we can change the
world. We do not have the luxury of despair,
but ought instead be spurred to action by
our moral sentiments and our hope for the
future. Incredible things have happened, and
they will happen again.
Ryan Jenkins, Editor

The front cover shows a
group of displaced children
in Kebkabiya, North Darfur
(USAID).

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About the Yeti
Founded in April 2005 by a small group of
students from FSU, The Yeti was created
as a truly independent alternative to the
corporately owned FSView. Fueled by a
hatred for the official FSU newspaper’s
constant dribble, our publication is for
interested and active people by an everincreasing collective of the same. The Yeti
allows you to become the media at Florida
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2 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

The Yeti Collective
Ryan Jenkins, President
Ginny Kotzias, Vice President
William Hermann, Treasurer

Support the Yeti – Advertise!
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The back cover is a
photograph of a pasteup by
Shepard Fairey, infamous
guerilla street artist.
Printed with assistance
from Campus Progress and
the Student Government
Association of Florida State
University.

Sixty five years ago the world watched as starved,
sick and humiliated prisoners walked from the death
camps of Poland, only to find out that twelve million
more had perished under their own watch. Sixty-five
years ago the world vowed “never again.”

culture
18 New Orleans and its Opposite
Ryan Jenkins

21

Independents Sink, Majors Swim
Erica Belfiore

literary
9 Talking to my father
Chris Herget

10
23

Aristophanes

Chris Herget

Untitled

Amber Maselli

Five McCain Advisers Resign Over Ties to Lobbyists
Senator McCain’s national finance co-chair Tom Loeffler
has resigned after it was revealed his lobbying firm has
collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002.
Loeffler is the fifth high-ranking McCain adviser to resign
in recent weeks due to his lobbying ties. On May 13,
McCain’s energy adviser Eric Burgeson stepped down
after it was revealed he is lobbyist on energy issues for
Barbour Griffith & Rogers. The week before, two other
McCain staffers resigned after acknowledging they had
lobbied for the military junta in Burma. McCain’s campaign
recently issued a new policy that requires all campaign
personnel to either resign or sever ties with lobbying firms
or outside political groups. But several prominent lobbyists
retain key posts in McCain’s campaign. McCain’s campaign
manager Rick Davis is on leave from the lobbying firm
he has run for years. And McCain’s top political adviser
Charles Black is the founder of the Washington lobbying
firm Black & Associates.
US Plans to Build 40-Acre Prison
Site in Afghanistan
The US military is planning to build a new 40-acre prison
complex in Afghanistan near Kabul. The $60 million site will
replace the makeshift prison at the Bagram military base,
where the US is currently holding about 630 prisoners.
Some of the prisoners at Bagram have been held for five
years without charge.
US Soldier in Iraq Uses Koran for Target Practice
US commanders in Iraq have admitted a US soldier has
been disciplined and removed from Iraq for using a copy of
the Koran for target practice. Last week, Iraqi police found
a desecrated copy of the Muslim holy book at a small
shooting range near Baghdad. The book was riddled with
fourteen bullet holes and had graffiti inside the cover. The
military has not released the soldier’s name or detailed how
he would be disciplined.
US to Help Saudi Arabia Build Nuclear Program
The price of oil remains at near record levels despite a
promise by Saudi Arabia to pump an additional 300,000
barrels of crude oil a day. Saudi Arabia made the
announcement on May 16 while President Bush was
meeting with Saudi’s King Abdullah. In exchange, Bush has
pledged US support for a Saudi nuclear power program. As
part of the deal, Washington will help Saudi Arabia receive
enriched uranium for its nuclear reactors.
The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 3

local

The Wonderful World
of Tallahassee
by

Ginny Kotzias

W

ith the sweltering
summer of Tallahassee
in full swing, Florida’s
blessed warm weather
seems more like a curse. Since out-ofdoors activities might be limited while local
temperatures soar into the high 90s, visiting
one of Tallahassee’s art, history, or natural
science museums is a must. Our little
city is blessed with the charms of several
independently owned and operated oases of
culture and there is certainly something for
every interest.
LeMoyne Art Foundation
125 N Gadsen St.
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10am-5pm,
Sunday 1pm-5pm
Admission: $1 Adults, kids free
LeMoyne is a small gallery dedicated to
8-10 annual exhibits that feature everything
from paintings and sculpture to jewelry
and handicrafts. The converted house
retains the feeling of afternoons spent in the
company of good friends and the gift shop
is an adorable haven for simple birthday or
Christmas gifts. The well-crafted garden in
the back is an inspiration to home gardeners,
containing sculpture, winding pathways, and
colorful flowers. Though a small museum,
this is definitely a lovely way to spend an
afternoon.
Goodwood Museum and Gardens
1600 Miccosukee Rd
Hours: Main house open Monday-Friday
10am-4pm, Saturday 10am-2pm
Gardens open Monday – Friday 9am5pm, Saturday 10am-2pm
Admission: Main house: $5 per person,
Kids 3 & under free
Gardens: free
Originally built in the 1830s as a cotton
and corn plantation, the Goodwood estate
has undergone a number of changes
over the past 170 years. Though used
4 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

consistently as a personal residence until the
1980s, the house and gardens have been
restored to reflect the appearance of the
property circa 1929. The sprawling gardens
cover several acres of the property though
the main house is not to be overlooked: all
original collections and furnishings make
the Goodwood house a shining example of
southern elegance and style.

Museum of Florida History, and pleasantly
surprised at all of the things that your teacher
never told you. A 9-foot mastodon (rumor
has it that many of these bones were
pulled from the bottom of Wakulla Springs),
treasures from a sunken Spanish galleon,
artifacts from the Civil war, and numerous
traveling exhibits make this a museum that
you don’t want to miss.

Mary Brogan Museum of Art and
Science
350 S. Duval St.
Hours: Monday – Saturday 10am-5pm,
Sunday 1pm-5pm
Admission: $6 Adults, $3.50 kids/
seniors/students, 3&under free
Though the Mary Brogan has earned a
reputation as a kids’ science center, much
more lies beyond the intimidatingly colorful
first floor. Divided into circular floors of
activity, the Mary Brogan exposes kids to
the finer points of physics and chemistry
while touting a world-class fine arts
gallery on the top floor. Rotating exhibits
of recent and modern artists (surrealists,
impressionists) as well as old masters (Dali,
Picasso) are beautifully displayed, worth
every penny of the admission. Students and
adults are encouraged to explore the lower
levels of the museum, though one should
be wary of the pitter-patter of little ones
underfoot.

Tallahassee Automobile Museum
6800 Mahan Dr.
Hours: Monday-Friday 9am-5pm,
Saturday-Sunday 12pm-5pm
Admission: $16 Adults, $10 Students,
$7.5 kids, 3& under free
With an impressive stock of cars
ranging from 1860 to 2001, the Tallahassee
Automobile Museum has a car for
every taste. Antique cars, over 80 rare
automobiles, a Batmobile, and the oldest
known fully surviving car in the US are
the pride and joy of this museum, not to
mention miscellaneous bicycle memorabilia
and local animal artifacts.

Museum of Florida History
500 S. Bronough St.
Hours: Monday-Friday 9am-4:30pm,
Saturday 10am-4:30pm, Sunday
12pm-4:30pm
Admission: Free
Most of us educated in the Florida Public
School system spent half of fourth grade
studying “Florida History.” Whatever tidbits
of your childhood education may linger in
the back of your head will be delighted to
recognize some of the highlights of the

Tallahassee Museum of History and
Natural Science
3945 Museum Drive
Hours: Monday-Saturday 9am-5pm,
Sunday 12:30-5pm
Admission: $9 Adults, $8.50 Seniors/
Students, $6.00 kids, 3&under free
If you’re looking for an all-day activity, the
Museum of History and Natural Science
is the place to be. With over 52 acres of a
natural habitat zoo, nature trails, an aviary,
reptile exhibits, and historic real estate, there
is more than enough to keep a nature-lover
occupied. If, however, artifacts and fine art
are more to your liking, the Phipps Gallery
houses rotating exhibitions and various
lodges throughout the property house
historical artifacts.

local

FSU Welcomes New
Human Rights Center
by

Florida State University Museum of
Fine Arts
Corner of Copeland and Call St
Hours: Monday-Friday 10am-4pm
Admission: Free
Though not a particularly large
museum, FSU has managed to pull
together a fascinating array of art and arts
for the enjoyment of students and public
alike. The changing contemporary and
traditional annual exhibits include South
American, Asian, European, and local
art in a vast array of media. The bronze
and sculpture gardens are sure to draw
glances and the stunning photography
and glass works are some of the finest
you will find in north Florida. Be sure
that you come prepared, however:
contemporary art is not for the weak of
heart.
Riley Museum Center of African
American History and Culture
419 E. Jefferson St.
Hours: Monday-Friday 10am-4pm
Admission: Free
As modern scholars strive for a more
balanced view of American history,
the experiences of the average man
are coming into greater light. The Riley
Museum is a testament to unsung
history, charting the plight of the AfricanAmerican middle class during the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. The
area surrounding the Riley house was,
during this time, referred to as “Smokey
Hollow,” and housed a number of
African-American families whose stake in
the area became threatened by the 1950
expansion of Apalachee Pkwy. The Riley
Museum is dedicated to the preservation
of African American culture in Tallahassee
and contains sermons, essays, antislavery memorabilia, war artifacts, art
exhibits, and original furnishings and
collections of the Riley family.

ALEXIS DIAO

T

his Fall 2008 semester look
out for a new organization on
campus called the Human
Rights Awareness Center.
The HRAC’s main concern, according to
executive director Daniel Swaisgood is
the students. Swaisgood hopes the new
organization will create awareness of
pertinent human rights issues to students
on campus and also provide information
on protests and other events available
for students to participate in. HRAC is
not another on-campus group trying
to save the world, instead they aim to
provide a central voice advertising events
held by various human rights groups
on campus. So say for example, if the
Center for Participant Education (CPE) is
holding another protest with the Coalition
of Immokalee Workers (CIW) at Burger
King, then HRAC would help advertise the
protest and raise awareness on the issue.
Think of them as an umbrella covering
the various human rights organizations on
campus. Swaisgood said in an email, “One
of the main goals of H.R.A.C. will be to
gather all this information then disseminate
it, thereby giving human rights a collective
voice rather than a fragmented one.”
HRAC also plans to provide a forum
for students to express their opinions and
raise awareness on human rights issues

by providing the opportunity for students
to publish articles via newsletter and online
website. Although neither of the two are
“up and running” said Swaisgood in a
phone interview. He explains the HRAC
reached a slow point when in May when
summer began because all of the existing
members are out of town. Swaisgood
assures that the group “plans on really
kicking off” when Fall rolls around.
Summertime, he adds, provides ample
time to brainstorm for potential projects.
Swaisgood stresses the HRAC as
a student-run organization. Apart from
providing a safe haven to formally express
their opinions, the HRAC also presents
the opportunity for students seriously
interested in human rights to gain hone
real-world skills. “This organization will
ultimately be about the students. The
newsletter, website, and any events that
we potentially host or sponsor will be
organized and overseen by the students.
They can then take that experience into
the professional world and utilize it to
the advantage of human rights. Also,
students who have a passion for human
rights issues will be given the opportunity
to voice their concerns in our monthly
newsletter. In this way, members will
get themselves published as well as raise
awareness.”

Gas prices have risen almost 75% in the
past year alone, from around $70 a barrel to
$120 and beyond. Though promises to free
America from its dependence on foreign
oil have been a staple of national politics
for decades, that need is now punctuated
by gas’s $4 per gallon price tag. So, what’s
behind the rise and what can be done?

It’s certainly not on par with
September 11th, or JFK being shot,
but I’ll always remember where I
was when I first saw a $4 gallon of
gasoline. It was the BP on the corner
of Magnolia and East Tennessee.
Again, of course, those three little
numbers – $4.03 – are certainly no
catastrophe on a massive human
scale, but it is a grim milestone for
our economy and the citizens of this
nation.
Gas prices have risen higher than
inflation in the later part of the 20th
century. According to the Ludwig von
Mises institute, a libertarian think tank
that publishes prolifically online, gas
should cost about $2.64 today, if it
had kept pace with inflation. (For your
information, gas was 30¢ per gallon
in 1950, and $1.47 in January of 2001,
when Bush took office.)
Extra costs have been tacked onto
the price since 1950, of course. Taxes
have risen to just about 20% of the
price of gas, when they were 1.5% in
1950.
Additionally, as the middle classes
in developing countries like China and
India grow and enter the market place,
demand for gas skyrockets. So does
the price.
Using a benchmark price, like $3.75
per gallon (which is admittedly low,
even at the time of publication), we
can take a look at where your money
goes.
About 60 cents on the gallon goes
to taxes. 18 cents of that goes to the
federal government, the rest goes to
state and local governments.
Besides taxes, 26 cents goes to
refining the gas. 11 cents goes to
distribution, which includes everything
from salaries for truck drivers and
barge captains to, ironically, the fuel
it takes to transport more fuel to gas
stations so that consumers can buy
and burn the fuel being transported.

The Gas Tax Holiday
In a flurry of typical Washingtonian
ersatz concern, a proposal for a “gas tax
holiday” has found purchase with a large
portion of the electorate. (Exit polls in
the West Virginia primary conducted by
CNN showed that 63% of respondents
thought it was a good idea to suspend
the federal gas tax.)
Most notably, Hillary Clinton and John
McCain have proposed suspending the
federal tax on gasoline. That means
a break of 18¢ per gallon on the fuel
consumers would buy. Note that this has
nothing to do with the state and local
taxes that make up the other two-thirds
of the total taxes levied on gas.
Here’s some rough math. According
to the U.S. government Department of
Energy, the average person drives about
11,400 miles per year in their car. If we
take the summer to be three months of
the year, from, say, June to August, we
can take an even fourth of that distance
to get 2,850 miles driven over the
summer.
According to the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration, the average
gas mileage for an American car is
about 25 miles per gallon. This means
the average American – granting some
leeway for this admittedly rough math –
uses 114 gallons of gas over the summer.
A gas tax rebate of 18¢ for every gallon
means the average American will save
$21.
Meanwhile, it will cost the government
a staggering $9 billion in lost tax revenue.
That’s enough money to provide universal
literacy or immunize every child the world
seven times over.

Hillary Clinton, one of the proponents
of the rebate, plans to simply redirect
the expenses to the oil industry, but
extracting billions of dollars from that
industry will likely force them to turn
right around and pass their newfound
expenses onto the consumer.
The gas tax holiday is a bad idea
for another, much more economically
concrete reason. An informational semilecture on MSNBC, complete with large
graphs on an easel, reminded viewers
that, on the basest level, there are two
variables in play: supply and demand.
What the gas tax holiday proposal does
is to artificially deflate the price of gas.
This will upset the equilibrium that is
sustained by the retailers’ setting the
price of gasoline at a point at which
demand meets supply. Suspending a tax,
and deflating the price of a good, creates
problems because it will increase the
demand for gas without increasing the
supply. In such a situation, the retailers of
gasoline can be expected to simply raise
the price of gasoline themselves to reach
the equilibrium price, where supply and
demand will again meet.
Ethanol the Wunderkind?
Ethanol was once heralded as an energy
wunderkind, making waves in the turbid
political waters. But it has since been met
by a grassroots backlash.
The idea behind ethanol was that
fuel additives could be refined from
corn oil, reducing our need for traditional
crude. In fact, the E-85 mixture is, as its
name suggests, 85% ethanol and only
15% regular gasoline. Several models
of cars that could run on this mixture

Taxes

$0.596

Refining

$0.262
Profits

$0.634
Crude

$2.146

Distribution

$0.112

rolled off the assembly line before the
consequences of championing ethanol
were fully felt.
Again, we return to supply and
demand. Sudden and ravenous
demand for corn sent its market price
skyrocketing, quadrupling the price of
corn on the world market in one year. The
United Nations in 2007 called for a fiveyear moratorium on biofuel production
from food crops like corn, arguing that the
unnecessary demand inflates food prices
to hazardous levels. (The UN reported
that it takes 510 pounds of corn to
produce one gas tank’s worth of ethanol
– 13 gallons. That much corn could feed a
child in the developing world for a year.)
As well, some scientists believe that
ethanol takes more energy to grow and
produce than it yields, leading to a net
loss. The pollutants released by ethanol
are also more harmful to the environment
and to humans than are those released
by gasoline.
The solution, which has become more
clear in recent years, is that sustainable
development and renewable energy must
be pursued – energy such as biogas from
bacterial colonies, hydroelectric power
used responsibly, wind or solar power,
now that tremendous advances in solar
cells have been made. America and its
politicians must realize that there is no
quick fix, as ethanol was once thought
by many to be. Instead, massive public
and private investment, innovation, and
careful forethought are the necessary
precursors to progress in the face of the
energy crisis.

A Piece of the Pie
There was quite an uproar when Exxon Mobile announced its recordbreaking profits of $40.4 billion last year. In a recent campaign ad, Barack
Obama contrasts the oil giant’s profits with the rising price of gas. But
just how much difference would it make if Exxon had redistributed every
penny it made last year equally between every gallon of gas it sold? The
answer is about 63¢ per gallon. Here’s the math:
Exxon produced 4.18 million barrels of oil per day in 2007, which
means it sold over 64 billion gallons of fuel total. $40.4 billion divided
over 64 billion gallons of oil comes out to 63¢ per gallon, or about 17% of
the price of a $3.75 gallon of fuel.

The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 7

nation

The Politics of Climate Change
by

Nastassia Patin, stanford university

W

hen Al Gore shared
the Nobel Peace
Prize with the
Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
it made front-page news and TV
headlines everywhere. Although
awareness of climate change has
spread to new levels in the past
few years, keeping up-to-date on
the policy developments can be
a challenge. Let’s take a look at
how climate science has recently
influenced, or failed to influence,
American and global policy.
The release of the fourth IPCC
report this year provided the most
important basis for policy decisions.
This report, a revised version of the
Panel’s past and continuing climate
research, was issued in four parts.
Its important statements declare
that “Warming of the climate
system is unequivocal” and “Most
of the observed increase in globally
averaged temperatures since the mid20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic
greenhouse gas concentrations.”
The final part of the report, the selfdescriptive “Summary for Policy
Makers,” was released in November.
So far, this is nothing that hasn’t
featured prominently in popular press
coverage of climate change. But less
well-known are the efforts of the US
and China to tone down the language
of the report. A lead author of the
report, Patricia Romero Lankao, said
in an interview with the Washington
Post that the US delegation pushed
to edit the following passage:
“However, adaptation alone is
not expected to cope with all the
projected effects of climate change,
and especially not over the long
8 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

run as most impacts increase in
magnitude. Mitigation measures
will therefore also be required.” The
second sentence was stricken from
the final version.
Additionally, China objected to the
wording of the following sentence:
“Based on observed evidence, there
is very high confidence that many
natural systems, on all continents and
in most oceans, are being affected by
regional climate changes, particularly
temperature increases.” According
to Lankao, when China asked that
the word “very” be removed, three
scientific authors balked, and the
deadlock was broken only by a
compromise to delete any reference
to confidence levels.
It is extremely worrisome that
individual governments can influence
the wording of a scientifically
produced paper of such momentous
importance. The Bush Administration
is well-known for its late and
reluctant admission that climate
change is a problem; its refusal
to admit that mitigation will be an
integral part of the solution severely
hinders the chances for global
collective action.
Closely following the release
of the Synthesis Report, the
Indonesian island of Bali hosted a
climate conference in December
2007. Delegates from nearly 190
countries produced a “framework” of
recommendations for tackling climate
change, with the goal of producing
a binding agreement by 2009.
President Bush was notably absent
from the conference, although former
Vice President Al Gore and prominent
state leaders like New York Mayor
Michael Bloomberg were among the
attendees. This “shadow” delegation

took positions on climate policy that
differed drastically from those of the
official Bush representative, Paula J.
Dobriansky.
In a particularly heated moment,
Dobriansky was nearly booed
offstage after refusing to accept
a commitment from industrialized
nations to provide technological and
financial aid to developing countries.
Ultimately, the US delegation agreed
to include the pledge, but it also
succeeded in eliminating explicit
language calling on industrialized
countries to cut their emissions 25 to
40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
According to the New York Times,
a chairman of the White House
Council on Environmental Affairs,
James L. Connaughton, stated that
such goals were “beyond reach.”
Such statements are indicative of the
attitude characteristic of the Bush
administration, which continues to
avoid obligatory commitments in any
form.
Although Bush continues to
oppose international treaty obligations
to cut greenhouse gas emissions,
he seems to be increasingly in the
minority, even among members of his
own party. Governor Schwarzenegger
received warm applause at an earlier
UN summit for declaring, “One
responsibility we all have is action.
Action, action, action.” Any hope that
the United States would take the lead
in mitigating the effects of climate
change under George W. Bush would
seem to be dashed. Nevertheless,
the growing awareness and concern
over the increasingly noticeable
effects of warming will undoubtedly
affect the policies of the next
administration.
On the other side of the Atlantic,

the latest climate reports have
spurred the European Union to
follow Schwarzenegger’s call. As
part of a plan unveiled on January
24, the EU would reduce greenhouse
gas emissions one-fifth by 2020,
imposing costs on major polluters
and rapidly scaling up how much
energy it draws renewable sources.
The centerpiece of the program is
a carbon cap-and-trade program for
heavy industry, causing worry that
costs of living and manufacturing
will soar. On the other side,
environmentalists say the EU plan
does not go far enough. Regardless
of the criticism, the EU has produced
an ambitious, concrete, and realistic
plan for reducing its greenhouse gas
emissions, which is miles beyond the
“voluntary” guidelines the US has
instituted.
Nevertheless, there is some hope

coming from the changing American
political atmosphere. Much of the
initiative on climate change policy
is appearing at the state level. Last
year, California enacted the first
economy-wide limits on greenhouse
gase; initial regulations are set to take
effect in 2010. California and a dozen
other states also are battling in court
and with the Bush administration to
cut vehicle emissions of greenhouse
gases, after the Environmental
Protection Agency rejected the initial
efforts. Although it will take a unified
national policy to truly effect major
changes in American’s greenhouse
gas emissions, the leadership shown
by California and other states is an
encouraging sign that the political
wind is shifting.
The only significant movement at
the federal level to cut emissions is
in the form of the Lieberman-Warner

Talking to my father
Chris Herget
Buckle up.
Words unspoken,
Now said.
The space across
The armrest
Fills with language.
Me, in the driver’s seat
And him in the
passenger seat
Next to me.
Bucket seats.
A fine leather trim
And interior cup holders.
Spaces underneath
The seats welcome
The cassette tapes,
In pleather cases

And metal zippers.
He sits, quiet,
Almost not there.
I keep driving,
My foot on the gas
And my eyes on the
Horizon.
Quick glances toward
him
Make me feel safe,
Make him feel safe.
I talk, he doesn’t speak.
He just sits there.
I roll down the window,
The slow hum of the old
Window echoes
In the spaces under the

seats.
I dip into him, squeeze
ashes
Into my palm.
Reach my hand out of
the car
And spread them on the
road.
Toward the horizon I
drive
Still talking to the man
Who isn’t there.
But who is still there,
In my car,
On the road, and in my
mind.

Bill, introduced this past October. This
bill requires cuts in greenhouse gases
from electric utilities, transportation
and manufacturing, accounting for
about 75 percent of U.S emissions.
It would cap emissions at the 2005
level starting in 2012 and gradually
reduce them to 1990 levels - a 15
percent reduction - by 2020, using
a cap-and-trade system. Over the
long term, the measures require a 65
percent reduction from 1990 levels by
2050.
On December 5, this bill passed
from the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee to the full
Senate. It is sure to encounter stiff
resistance from Congressmen hostile
to the idea of carbon regulation;
however, it is encouraging to see
that several prominent Republicans
have signed on as co-sponsors of the
bill, including Sens. Elizabeth Dole
of North Carolina, Norm Coleman
of Minnesota, and Susan Collins
of Maine. Senator John Warner is
himself one of the Senate’s most
respected Republicans.
Such signs of progress are hopeful,
but perhaps the biggest source of
hope for America’s future climate
policy can be found in the words
of Al Gore, speaking at the climate
conference in Bali: “Over the next
two years, the United States is going
to be somewhere it is not right now,”
said Gore, referring to the upcoming
elections. Growing public awareness,
largely thanks to the efforts of people
like Gore, and progressive state
action led by California are beginning
to show the world that Americans are
ready to commit to the fight against
climate change.

The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 9

nation

Whitewashing the
Second Amendment
by

Stephanie Mencimer, mother jones magazine

R

acial politics dominated
the talk in Washington for
several days after Barack
Obama called on Americans
to stop ignoring the country’s racist
past and move forward. The message,
apparently, didn’t reach the U.S.
Supreme Court, where the justices
were busy ignoring race during a
hearing on the biggest case of the
year. On the same day Obama gave
his big speech, the court heard oral
arguments in D.C. v. Heller, a case
challenging the District of Columbia’s
30-year-old law banning handgun
ownership. The case marks the first
time the Supreme Court has reviewed
the Second Amendment in 70 years,
and its interpretation could have
far-reaching implications for state
gun laws. Heller is mostly about gun
ownership, but it is also about race—
not that you would know that based on
the oral arguments.
First, by way of background: The
key issue in Heller is whether the
Constitution guarantees an individual,
as opposed to a collective, right to bear
arms within the context of a wellorganized militia. The plaintiff, Dick
Anthony Heller, is an armed security
guard who, with the help of some
rich libertarians, brought the lawsuit
against the District, arguing that the
city’s handgun ban illegally prevented
him from keeping his work weapon at
home. Last year, in a 2-to-1 decision,
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit agreed and ruled that the city’s
gun-control law was an unconstitutional
infringement on an individual’s right
to bear arms. Fearing a flood of new
firearms into the city as a result, the
District appealed to the Supreme Court.
Dozens of interest groups, from
the Pink Pistols to Jews for the

10 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

Preservation of Firearms Ownership,
have filed amicus briefs, offering their
take on the Second Amendment. But
during oral arguments, Justice Anthony
Kennedy and his conservative brethren
seemed to fully embrace the gun
lobby’s favorite romantic myth that the
founders, inspired by the image of the
musket in the hands of a minuteman,
wrote the Second Amendment to give
Americans the right to take up arms to
fight government tyranny. But what the
founders really had in mind, according
to some constitutional-law scholars,
was the musket in the hands of a slave
owner. That is, these scholars believe
the founders enshrined the right to
bear arms in the Constitution in part to
enforce tyranny, not fight it.
At an American Constitution Society
briefing on the Heller case, NAACP
Legal Defense Fund president John
Payton explained the ugly history behind
the gun lobby’s favorite amendment.
“That the Second Amendment was the
last bulwark against the tyranny of the
federal government is false,” he said.
Instead, the “well-regulated militias”

cited in the Constitution almost certainly
referred to state militias that were used
to suppress slave insurrections. Payton
explained that the founders added the
Second Amendment in part to reassure
southern states, such as Virginia, that
the federal government wouldn’t use its
new power to disarm state militias as a
backdoor way of abolishing slavery.
This is pretty well-documented
history, thanks to the work of Roger
Williams School of Law professor Carl
T. Bogus. In a 1998 law-review article
based on a close analysis of James
Madison’s original writings, Bogus
explained the South’s obsession with
militias during the ratification fights over
the Constitution. “The militia remained
the principal means of protecting the
social order and preserving white control
over an enormous black population,”
Bogus writes. “Anything that might
weaken this system presented the
gravest of threats.” He goes on to
document how anti-Federalists Patrick
Henry and George Mason used the fear
of slave rebellions as a way of drumming
up opposition to the Constitution and

Aristophanes
Chris Herget
the pond
covered in lily’s
and the flowers
that bloomed
when I wasn’t
here to see
the little ones
hang by the
rocks sharp edge
as the moms and dads
circle around
they protect
just as any

parent should do
swim close to
me by my side
and don’t let
me drown
ripples on the
surface calls
forth the end
the breaking
which i leave
for only soon
will come

how Madison eventually deployed the
promise of the Second Amendment to
placate Virginians and win their support
for ratification.
None of this figured into the
arguments at the Supreme Court.
Instead, a majority of the justices,
especially Kennedy, seemed to buy
the story that the founders were
inordinately concerned with the ability
of early settlers to use guns to fend off
wild animals and Indians, not rebellious
slaves. (Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick counts
pivotal swing-voter Kennedy making

while two of the original five plaintiffs
in the Heller case are black women, not
a whole lot of African Americans in the
District appear to be out there clamoring
to own more handguns for self-defense.
In an interview, Bogus says that
polls consistently show that African
Americans support gun control in much
higher numbers than white people do,
and probably for good reason: They’re
usually the ones looking at the wrong
end of the barrel. As the NAACP points
out in its brief on Heller, in D.C. in 2004,
there were 137 gun-homicide victims. All
but two of them were
black. If the Supreme
Court invalidates
the city’s handgun
ban, any ensuing
uptick in gun violence
is likely to have a
disproportionate
impact on African
Americans, particularly
young men.
Of course, it won’t
only be young black
men who suffer
should the court
decide that D.C.
residents need more handguns. In
fact, someone ought to remind Justice
Kennedy about what happens when
the wrong people get guns—namely
the average, law-abiding D.C. residents
who would supposedly benefit from the
new gun ownership rights. With all his
concern with grizzly bears, Kennedy has
clearly forgotten about Carl Rowan Sr.
Back in 1988, the African American
syndicated columnist shot an unarmed,
18-year-old white kid from Chevy Chase
who’d gone for an unauthorized dip
in Rowan’s swimming pool. Rowan,
who shot the kid in the wrist as he
tried to flee, claimed he’d feared for his

The militia remained the principal
means of protecting the social
order and preserving white
control over an enormous black
population. Anything that might
weaken this system presented
the gravest of threats.
no fewer than four mentions of a
mythical “remote settler,” who Kennedy
suggested would have needed a gun to
“defend himself and his family against
hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves
and bears, and grizzlies.”)
Just as the court largely ignored the
racist past of the Second Amendment,
its focus on self-defense also glossed
over the more obvious racial implications
of the decision it was reviewing. The
plaintiff, Heller, is a white man who
lives in a 60 percent black city whose
democratically elected leaders long ago
decided that handguns were doing more
harm than good to its citizenry. Indeed,

life and was only defending himself.
Nonetheless, the columnist was
prosecuted for illegally possessing a
handgun. The trial ended with a hung
jury and Rowan escaped punishment
(though the teenagers were sentenced
to community service), but the incident
fueled a tremendous amount of racial
tension in the city that might have been
avoided if Rowan had just, say, called
the cops.
Gun-wielding journalists who can’t
shoot straight may not be the bulwark
against tyranny libertarians had in
mind. Yet they’re just one of the many
scary scenarios the District faces
should the court rely on language
inspired by slavery and the libertarians’
whitewashed version of American
history to restrict the ability of a majority
black city to protect its citizens from gun
violence.
Stephanie Mencimer is a reporter
in Mother Jones’ Washington, D.C.,
bureau and the author of Blocking the
Courthouse Door: How the Republican
Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking
Away Your Right to Sue (Free Press,
2006). This article originally appeared
on MotherJones.com and is reprinted
with permission from Mother Jones. For
more information on Mother Jones, or to
subscribe, visit www.motherjones.com.

The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 11

Photo: Flickr user katmere

feature

The Cause of Our Time
by

Jenna Citron, president of student darfur awareness group (sdag)

P

lagued by civil war, years
of drought, neglect and
oppression by their own
government, the crisis in
Dafur is both complicated, and hostile.
The most recent fighting began in 2003
as the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA)
and the Justice and Equality movement
(JEM) began an uprising against the
central government in Khartoum. In
response, President Al-Bashir armed a
militia called the Janjaweed (they are
black African Muslims) to put down the
uprising. Instead, the Janjaweed have
looted, beaten, raped and murdered
throughout Darfur (where the people
are non Arab African Muslims).
According to most advocacy groups,
including savedarfur.org, they have
murdered over 400,000, and displaced
millions more. This issue is widely
thought to be a religious holocaust;
however, it is not religious. Both areas
of Sudan (north and south) are mainly
Muslim territories (as they have been
for centuries) with smaller groups of
Christians, and Animists. The ravaging
has occurred consistently to non-Arab

Muslim villages, while Arab villages
have been left alone. This conflict can
be compared to the ethnic cleansing
that occurred in the Yugoslav wars
between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks,
or Bosnian Muslims.
Why Social Action
Sixty five years ago the world watched
as starved, sick and humiliated
prisoners walked from the death camps
of Poland, only to find out that twelve
million more had perished under their
own watch. Sixty-five years ago the
world vowed “never again.” And yet,
all the world has seen since then is

Dear Congressman,
As many as 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur.
Another 2.5 million have been driven from their homes and into
danger. The threat of rape, torture, murder and malnutrition
pursue the women and children of Darfur wherever they flee.
World leaders must unite now to end the genocide and establish
a lasting peace in Darfur.

again and again. It has been five years
since the world really began to pay
attention and begin to understand the
situation in Darfur. We’ve seen movies,
celebrity spokespersons, read books,
and seen the news reports. There
have been movements to persuade
our governments to take political,
military, and peacekeeping action.
Beyond college campus awareness,
and Washington demonstrations what
have the powerful really done? Close
to nothing. Not even our political
candidates are talking about potential
solutions to this lingering problem.
But here is the bigger question: If

4. Work to ensure the Sudanese government’s full participation
in a just and inclusive peace process, and to overcome any
attempts to obstruct or delay the protection of civilians or
the peace process;
5. Increase humanitarian aid and ensure access for its safe
delivery.
Thank you for your leadership on this urgent matter.

I therefore ask you to:
1. Make ending the crisis in Darfur one of your top priorities;
2. Push for the fastest possible deployment of the hybrid U.N.A.U. peacekeeping force authorized by the U.N. Security
Council in July;
3. Pressure contributing nations to fully and immediately meet
their pledges of troops, funding, equipment, and logistical
support;

Sincerely,

my government wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do anything,
what can I do? For one, there is always
generous (or not so generous, college
students are all somewhat poor as we
all know) contributions to the hundreds
of organizations out there who aid
refugees. Second, write a letter to
your senators and representatives,
even write one to the President. Do
not feel bashful; do not feel as if no
one will ever read it- they will. And
more importantly, if enough send
those letters action is taken. For some
interesting insight on who and how
action has been taken by our politicians
go to www.darfurscores.com and see
if your representatives are representing
you. If not tell them to- that is their job
after all. Even take a look into your state
representatives. They are doing more
for this matter than you might think. In
fact, just last year the Florida House
of Representatives passed a Darfur
Divestment Bill. The bill states that all
companies though to have connections
to the Sudanese Government or
companies doing business with them
but divest their assets or their state
of Florida will divest theirs from each
company. This is the action the United
States took toward South African
apartheid, and as we all know apartheid
is in the past. Third, talk to your friends
and family about it, they might not
even know, or understand for that

Displaced women stand together in the Intifada transit camp in South Darfur. A
disproportionate number of IDPs in the camps are women and children
matter that this is genocide no different
than the one we all read about in our
elementary classes. Remind them that
the spectacular Olympics we all used to
look forward to each year is hosted this
year by a government that continues
to make matters worse for Darfur for
their own benefit. Let them think about
that when they turn on the Beijing
Olympics. And last but not least, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

think any move you make is too small of
a move. No single person is expected
to change the world; however, together
I believe is it more than possible. That
is why Florida State University has such
organizations as the Student Darfur
Awareness Group (SDAG) to give
students the outlet they need to make
a change. We believe weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to do
our part in making that so.

Congress must

Act Now

to End the Crisis in
Darfur

nation

The Roots of Our
Do-Nothing Congress
by

Scott Keyes, stanford university

W

e have a do-nothing
Democratic Congress.
Despite being a proud
Democrat, I have no
qualms about holding this opinion.
We have failed to see meaningful
legislation on a host of problems
facing this nation including health care
policy, the environment, troop levels in
Iraq, and stem cell research. Without
a doubt, the wave Democrats rode
into power in 2006 has not produced
the changes in national policy that
were promised. Thus, with so much
left unfulfilled, we unfortunately find
ourselves in the midst of a do-nothing
Democratic Congress.
And the Republicans are to blame.
The responsibility for a lack of progress
in Congress does not lie with the
Democrats, who have worked tirelessly to
enact popular, common-sense legislation
on the major problems facing America.
Democrats cannot be faulted for their
work-ethic; the current 110th Congress
has held more votes, conducted more
oversight hearings, and spent far more time
in session than the previous Republicancontrolled Congress.
Rather, Republican obstructionism has
kept progress at bay. Nearly every major
piece of legislation has been vetoed,
filibustered, or been otherwise procedurally
blocked.
However, such legislation has not been
hindered for a lack of national consensus.
Despite Republicans’ claims, on nearly
every issue of importance, the will of the
American people is clear.
Take health care. As one of the top
three issues to the American public, a
recent Gallup poll found 64% of Americans
believe it is the responsibility of the federal
government to provide health coverage
to all Americans. Democrats have been
trying since the mid-1990s to ensure

access to quality, affordable health care for
every American, only to have such efforts
blocked by the Republicans.
We find the same story with the
environment and global warming. A
recent ABC News poll showed that
70% of Americans believe the federal
government should do more to deal with
global warming. When the Democrats
proposed a bill to this effect in December
2007, Republicans garnered 40 votes in the
Senate to block a vote on the matter.
Republicans have even blocked progress
on the defining issue of the 2006 elections:
the war in Iraq. Democrats were given a
clear mandate to provide a new direction
in Iraq and begin to reduce troop levels.
Indeed, a Los Angeles Times poll found
that 63% believe we ought to withdraw
United States troops within one year. This
is almost precisely what the Democrats
have proposed, and a bill to this effect was
passed by Congress in March 2007, only to
be vetoed by President Bush and sustained
by Republicans in Congress.
Bush has similarly stifled funding for
stem cell research against the wishes of
the American people. According to a Gallup
poll, 64% of Americans believe Bush
should not have vetoed a congressional
bill (which he did twice) that would have
allowed federal funding of embryonic stem
cell research. Though this bill was passed
with a fair number of Republicans joining
the Democrats, it failed to become law
because of President Bush’s veto and his
Republican counterparts in Congress.
Despite the media’s clamoring that
the two parties have pushed themselves
to the extremes of the American political
spectrum while most Americans sit
comfortably in the middle, it is clear that
on issue after issue, the Democrats
represent the national consensus while
Republicans represent the ideological
fringe. As OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers noted,

“The simple fact is that the majority
of Democrats in Congress haven’t
permanently blocked a popular solution
to any major problem facing America in at
least fifteen years.”
The same cannot be said of the
Republicans. They have consistently
hindered progress on popular legislation,
not only on health care, the environment,
and stem cell research, but also reductions
in subsidies for oil companies and giving
soldiers who have fought in Iraq more
time to rest and recuperate between
deployments.
What’s more, with one year left in the
110th Congress, Republican obstructionism
has already reached an unprecedented
level. In less than one year, Republicans
have used the filibuster 62 times to block
legislation from coming to a vote, breaking
the previous two-year record set by the
Republican minority in the 107th Congress
of 61 filibusters. They are on pace for
134 filibusters by the end of the 110th
Congress, approximately the same number
of filibusters conducted in the entire 1980s.
Whatever happened to the party of the
“up-or-down vote”?
The Democrats are not entirely without
fault for some of the unfulfilled promises
thus far in the 110th Congress, including
not fighting harder for troop redeployment
legislation. However, their culpability cannot
even begin to be equated with that of
the Republicans. On nearly every major
piece of legislation, the Democratic Party,
acting with a mandate from over 65% of
the American public, has been blocked
by the procedural tactics of the minority.
Republicans are stopping Congress from
making progress and then asking why they
haven’t made any progress on anything.
With all this in mind, the problem with the
do-nothing Congress isn’t that Democrats
are in control. It’s that there aren’t enough
of them.
The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 15

nation

Five Minutes with: Ralph Nader
by

Srinivas Rao, Ben Adler, and Graham Webster, campus progress

I

f any American of the past
50 years can be called a
professional citizen, it’s the
famous—and infamous—Ralph
Nader. Since the 1960’s, Nader has
led the charge against environmental
degradation, consumer manipulation,
and all the dangers of a country
dominated by large corporations.
Flanked by hundreds of Nader’s
Raiders, Nader successfully lobbied
for the consumer protections that
Americans now take for granted—
without his activism, we would most
likely not have the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration’s
workplace protections, the EPA’s
environmental reforms, the Freedom
of Information Act, and much more.
Being the man responsible for seat
belts is an understandably hard act
to follow—yet, sure enough, Ralph
found a way to expand upon his
legacy. “He made the cars we drive
safer,” explains The Atlantic Monthly.
“Thirty years later, he made George
W. Bush the president.” Running on
the Green Party ticket in 2000, Nader
was supported by many prominent
liberals, but scorned for potentially
throwing the election to Bush by
others. Sure enough, after Nader
gained tens of thousands of votes in
Florida—the deciding state that Bush
carried by approximately five hundred
votes—and exit polls demonstrated
that Nader’s supporters would have
been more likely to support Gore
than Bush had Nader not been on the
ballot, Nader came to be widely seen
as a spoiler, even by many of his
former supporters. 2004 saw another
Nader candidacy followed with
another, harsher, liberal backlash—
and 2008 will most likely see a
similar outcome if Nader chooses to
16 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

run again.
For now, though, Nader is in the
public eye again in a different role:
movie star. Steven Skrovan and
Henriette Mantel’s new documentary
An Unreasonable Man takes a
comprehensive look at Nader and
questions whether he can really be
blamed for the Bush presidency.
Nader also continues his prolific
career as an author with 2007’s The
Seventeen Traditions, looking at the
lessons his parents taught him and
what young people everywhere could
learn from them. Love him or hate
him, no one denies that Ralph Nader
has had a profound effect on the last
half-century of American politics.
He spoke with Campus Progress
about his continuing fight against
corporate globalization, his potential
as a presidential candidate in 2008,
and his opinion on what students can
do to carry the torch of consumer
activism.
Campus Progress: What are the
most important consumer advocacy
issues today and what can young
people do to advocate for consumer
rights?
Ralph Nader: You can define
consumer advocacy in terms of the
marketplace and public services—
government services including police,
fire, building codes, and a whole
variety of social services. Today,
students are really overwhelmed with
their own personal problems—their
own student loans, questions on
whether they are going to get health
insurance when they graduate, and
whether their jobs are going to be
outsourced, even if they are white
collar jobs. So they have to develop
a public philosophy and segregate

a certain amount of time for their
citizen responsibilities. If they do
that, then that is the allocation of
time that moves into developing their
citizen skills, which they don’t learn
in school. Whether they are specific
skills, like how to use the Freedom
of Information Act, how to build a
coalition, or they are personality
skills like how not to be discouraged,
how to be resilient, how to share the
credit when you are involved in the
struggle, locally and nationally with
your friends and collaborators.
So the first step students should
take is to insist that they have a
civics course in their curriculum. If
they can’t get it in their curriculum,
they should do it outside the
classroom. They need to have these
civic skills, and a good way to do it is
through internships, fellowships, and
working with local action groups.
Substantively we have health
insurance, universal health insurance
the key issue. Losing control of
people’s money through credit
cards and all the kinds of financial
controls, penalties, late payments,
and all that is another big one. The
third one is compulsory consumption
of pollution and toxins, where you
have no choice but to absorb these
involuntarily. Fourth is to have
enough to spend, which means
dealing with poverty and the living
wage in the country. The fifth would
be some of the newer technologies
that students are on the cutting
edge of—genetic engineering and
nanotechnology. How do you think
the consumer activism movement
can fit into international trade and
international policies?
Well, corporate globalization
is really the fundamental issue

Ralph Nader has drawn the ire of many progressives who blame him for unwittingly sabotaging Al Gore’s 2000 presidential attempt.
pertaining to what you are asking
about, and what we’ve done is
become a signatory nation, along
with 140 others, to the WTO
and, with Canada and Mexico,
to NAFTA. And that is a bypass
of our democratic process. It is
a layering over of an autocratic,
transnational system of government,
which subordinates worker and
environmental consumer standards
and issues to the imperatives of
commercial, international trade.
And that, of course, is a reversal

of the way we have progressed
in our country, where every time
we move forward, whether by
abolishing slavery, ending child
labor, or environmental issues,
we’ve said to corporations, “Your
commercial priorities are going to be
subordinated to adjusting to these
higher standards of health, safety,
and human rights.”
The corporate globalization in
these trade agreements reverses
that, and subordinates human
rights to commercial supremacy.

Everything follows from that; you
get more advanced countries pulling
down toward lower levels of third
world countries by virtue of shipping
whole industries to communist
dictatorships or fascist dictatorships
in the third world where costs are not
determined by market factors, they
are determined by dictatorships and
oligarchs, labor costs for example. It
is anything but free trade; you cannot

Continued on 22
The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 17

culture

New Orleans and its Opposite
A Travelogue from Spring Break
by

Ryan Jenkins

I

f you travel to New Orleans
by I-10 west, the way we did,
you won’t see much. You will
see a vast vista of marshland,
brown sawgrass poking up through
Mississippi muck for a few miles on
end, with the downtown’s handful of
jutting skyscrapers stark against the
background. It’s a fitting foreboding,
glass and concrete pitted against the
fetid and murky outlying swamps. It is
the first of many such ironies.
New Orleans has begun to reinstate
its claim to being a tourist Mecca,
drawing college students – and a
surprising number of older folks – to
its infamous Bourbon Street, center
of drunken excess, bead-throwing
and corresponding exposures. (I was
sadly witness to none of the latter.) In
its Riverwalk mall, a series of banners
advertising the city to tourists proudly
professes their recovery, emblazoned
with such slogans as “Soul is
waterproof.”
In all areas, so they say, New
Orleans has gotten up, brushed itself
off – or wrung itself out – and is eager
for tourist dollars. A posh new visitor
center, the Basin Street Station, has
recently opened. (I could tell because
one of its murals, a map of Louisiana in
an archaic style, is signed 2006 by the
artist.) One of its attractions is a sevenminute video about how jazz music has
influenced the history and spirit of the
city. (The city boasts hosting such greats
as Louie Armstrong and Fats Domino.)
The movie ends with Louie Armstrong
singing, “Do you know what it means
to miss New Orleans?” Indeed, the city
is so infatuated with Armstrong that
they christened a park in his honor in
the early 90’s, a park with a grand arch
entranceway, fountains, an auditorium,
and a museum inside.
18 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

But nowadays, the park is closed.
When we told our guide at the visitor
center, she made a hesitant reference
to sanitation issues. “The city doesn’t
really have the funds [to keep the park
clean.” The citizens have had to organize
their own cleanup efforts. (I wondered,
additionally, if her hesitance betrayed
concerns about vagrancy, gangs, drunks,
etc. This poor woman, whose job it is
to attract and excite visitors to the city,
had been tasked with an impossible
chore in spinning the state of Armstrong
Park.) So, then, the park remains closed
to tourists and citizens alike, a an irony
among many in the Crescent City.

I

n the gorgeous downtown area
around Canal Street, trolleys run
up and down the main drag, jazz
musicians and tap dancers play
for change, and the gulf breeze cools the
skin.

Yet, truth be told, it may have been
impossible to persuade my party
that New Orleans had recovered to
its previous luster. Camping to the
southeast of the city in St. Bernard
state park, we had to drive back and
forth through the Ninth Ward every
time we drove into the city proper. St.
Bernard street has a lovely section of
canopy, bordered on either side by
dilapidated barns, rusted equipment and
demolished storefronts.
Strangely, new developments have
sprouted in the ruinous remains of the
town of St. Bernard. Perhaps some
ambitious carpetbaggers are snatching
up the recently devalued land. As a
result, trailers and mansions stand
adjacent. We passed one trailer that
rested in the front lawn of a mansion.
On the last day of our visit, we
ventured into the Lower Ninth Ward,
generally agreed to be the area

(Below) Life sprouts from a mausoleum in St. Louis Cemetery No 1. Such a contrast
is exactly what I had come to expect from NOLA.

(Left) A spray-painted building grieves about a lost home. On the right side of the edge is a spray-painted X, denoting when the
building was searched. (Right) The local government’s breathtakingly inane injunction for its people to simply “Think positive!”
hardest hit by Katrina, the costliest
natural disaster in US history. Despite
the heralded claims of cleaning up,
there is still much that needs to be
done. Crumbling buildings abound,
interspersed with empty lots, where
something used to stand, no doubt, now
overgrown with two and a half years of
grass and weeds. Buildings are spraypainted with X’s, presumably denoting
that they had been searched after
Katrina, and with messages like “Gave
more water 10/6[/05]” and “SPCA:
1 cat outside”. One building laments,
“This was home”.
Continuing our journey into the city
center, we pass a sign that urges with
heartfelt indifference, “Think positive,
St. Bernard!” How Hooverian.
Though the visitor center’s video
billed New Orleans as a beacon of
education, culture, and the arts, the St.
Bernard Adult Education Center looks
like it hasn’t been inhabited in years. The
paint is peeling. A gigantic dead tree lies
overturned in the lawn. The sign reads,
“Classes begin August 2005,” the
month Katrina hit.

W

here the Ninth Ward
is scarce, acetic, and
somber, the French
Quarter is debauched,
excessive, and intoxicated. Glaring neon
advertises Larry Flynt nude shows and

all manner of strip joints. My personal
favorite was the Unsexxx Club, featuring
“World famous love acts.” At night,
the doors opened onto the street
and displayed a few dozen amateur
photographs of every kind of sexual
behavior just short of intercourse.
Many places advertise “Beer to go.”
(Is this the center of culture we have
been led to believe it is?) We stopped
into a corner market just across Canal
Street, the west border of the French
Quarter. The Vieux Carre, as the Cajuns
call it, is one of the few localities in
the United States that still allows open
containers on the street. We each
bought single beers at a good price
without being carded. When we realized
that glass containers were still outlawed,
the cashier gave us plastic cups. When
we realized our beers were not twistoffs, the cashier popped the caps for us.
They really make it easy.
And it shows. The French Quarter
by night is a lecherous affair, host to
hundreds or thousands of wandering
inebriates, dancing, drinking, shouting. I
wondered how many were locals, how
many were drinking illegally, and how
many would be puking into the street in
the morning hours.

“I

know y’all know this one.
I know y’all get cable,” he
says. He’s a black man
with his upper row of
teeth capped in gold. He’s wearing a
neon green t-shirt, which makes him
match the three other head men. We’re
standing on a checkerboard mat in front
of an audience of maybe 100, between
Jackson Square and the Mississippi
River. The green shirts are about to put
on a breakdance show, but have stopped
when they learned it was an audience
member’s birthday. Christine is turning
24 today. So, now, all of the members in
the audience who know the Soulja Boy
have been brought down to the center
to celebrate by dancing. It comes to light
that we may have a false positive: one
audience member asks our gold-toothed
friend how to dance the Soulja Boy. “I
don’t know,” is his reply. “My FEMA
trailer doesn’t get cable.”
This town has a curious sense
of humor, as black as the voodoo
priestesses that strolled the Quarter three
hundred years ago. The tourist shops
apparently make a killing selling shirts that
satirize Katrina. “FEMA evacuation plan:
Run, bitch run!”. “FEMA: Fix Everything
My Ass”. “8.25.05 Never Forget”. “I
drove my Chevy to the levee but the
levee was gone”.
Continued on next
The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 19

The drinks at Copeland’s Cheesecake
Bistro are all named after the hurricane.
“Calm Before the Storm,” “Hurricane
Warning,” and “Category 5” are among
them. Is this trying to make light of the
situation? Or maybe it’s all just for the
tourists. One wonders how much is all
just for the tourists.
Maybe it’s a stubborn independence
that has developed since the disaster.
NOPD doesn’t stand for New Orleans
Police Department, so the locals say.
It stands for “Not our problem, dude.”
Spray-paint on a neglected home’s front
reads, “No FEMA help, keep our taxes”.
Such sentiments are an odd contradiction
to the nascent community spirit and
recognition that we are all interdependent
– things that are supposed to follow in
the wake of an unspeakably destructive
natural disaster.
Meanwhile, the churches are
flourishing, despite the poverty. That
seems to always be the case. When
people can’t turn to their fellow man, they
turn to the Man upstairs.

B

ut all is not negative in
New Orleans. When New
Orleans is on, it’s on. At
night, Bourbon Street pulses
with the competing sounds of live rock
and jazz, drunken karaoke, and general
carousing. The Café du Monde, “The
Original Coffee Stand,” still sells nothing
but coffee and beignet – a fried pouch
of dough embedded in a mountain of
powdered sugar that is truly divine. And
one can’t exist for long in NOLA without

(Above) In the Lower Ninth Ward, a prefabricated home sits next to an utterly
demolished former home.
absorbing a relaxed, Let-the-good-timesroll attitude through osmosis.
New Orleans has a number of aboveground cemeteries that are infused
with history. (Because of the soft earth,
people had to be buried in mausoleums
rather than under the ground.) The St.
Louis Cemetery No. 1, which we visited,
was overwhelming in its beauty and
sublime grandeur.
As a nod to the city’s French history,
many of the tombstones are engraved
with ici reposent, “here lies.” There were
magnificent marble structures housing
dozens of graves, adorned with religious
statues and crosses, and there were
much more rudimentary enclosures.
Some tombs were nothing more than a
pile of bricks with a carved headstone.
There were World War I and II veterans.
There was a veteran of the Civil War who
had fought for the Confederacy. There
was one grave that contained the lineage
of a family, six generations, stretching
back to 1845. Someone was buried in

New Orleans’ Canal Street district is a beehive of tourism and charming extravagance.

20 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

1760: before this country existed, this
cemetery was here. That’s history.
“Tradition in progress” is New Orlean’s
slogan. (I learned it from a trash can in
the French Quarter.) I’m not sure what
it’s progressing towards, but one thing
that New Orleans unquestionably retains
is its rich tradition.

N

ew Orleans still carries
the proud standard of their
cultural heritage: their
tradition, their history. It
also attracts throngs of tourists, some
seeking that history, some seeking a
much baser goal. The juxtapositions that
abound are mostly the products of an
overactive and somewhat cynical mind.
But all my mind has done is catalogue
the facts of the matter into a particular
framework. There is death and there is
growth, there is dignified history and
there is unprincipled imbibing. There is
one thing and there is its opposite, as
can be found in any time.
Leaving New Orleans is much the
same as arriving. You will see the same
resurgence and the same desolation.
The latter, despite what the tourism
board would have you believe, is still
very much a part of what the Crescent
City is today. They have made strides,
I’m sure. The levees have been fixed,
though the damage from the waters
may never be repaired fully. Houses
have been demolished, though many
still remain. And in a cemetery, a green
blade sprouts from a whited sepulcher.
Ici reposent irony.

CULTURE

Independents Sink, Majors Swim
by

Erica Belfiore

M

ajor labels have finally
hit the iceberg. CEOs
are scrambling for a
seat on the lifeboat as
they scrounge around for new business
models that can keep them afloat.
With onslaught of ad-supported music
websites, social music networks,
streaming internet players, and direct
artist downloads, the industry is yet again
undergoing evolution.
This is not the first time corporate
dinosaurs have blamed technological
advancements for unwanted shifts in
music consumerism. In 1978, record
sales dropped because of cassette
tapes, and in 1983, an upstart cable
channel called MTV revolutionized
the importance of artist appearance.
International retaliation sprang up as
musicians claimed, “Cassette taping
[was] encouraging pirating and killing
music,” and television coverage of bands
was depreciating artist authenticity.
Regardless, major labels jumped on the
bandwagon, and huge corporations,
like Sony, put more money towards
the trend, selling their own cassette
devices and making MTV the face of
the music industry. To their resilience,
Sony Music, along with Warner Music
Group, EMI, and Universal, teamed up
with CD distributors such as Caroline
Distribution and other corporate giants
like Ticketmaster and Best Buy to create
an empire over new music marketing
resources.
Wouldn’t it be ideal to see a
band use the internet and other resources
available to them without a hierarchal
ladder of corporate assholes? Radiohead
may be the most talked about posterchildren for possibility, but then I ask
how long they climbed up it before they
took a leap of faith on their own. It’s a
double sided debate when the musical

universe at our fingertips and it’s still hard
to find a way to beat the corporations
to the punch. Consequently each make
their moves accordingly; Joe Slayer sits
at home spending hours perfecting his
myspace, as record labels scramble for
digital alternatives and EMI’s CEO lays off
artists reps for digital programmers. Indie
record labels are concerned with their
resources, artists are concerned with
their accessibility, and big corporations
are concerned with their six figure losses.
So who is running the music business
now?
Major labels refuse to back down
that easily as they look towards the big
picture, in all sense of the phrase. Artist
appearance, endorsements, paparazzi
footage, gimmicks and outlandish
performances are their staples of
success. Artists like Lil Wayne and Fall
Out Boy are guaranteed promos in Virgin
Megastore as well as on the shelves of
Mom and Pop record stores across the
country, as most 14 year old rockers are
guaranteed to recognize Patrick Stump’s
photo on a cardboard cutout. But the
importance is not so much on the CDs
as it is the promo itself. The more they
see his face, the quicker they conclude
that he’s the second hottest thing to
Paris Hilton. It is obvious that CD sales
will no longer indicate their success, so
fudging a couple scandals and attending
more photo shoots than band practices is
basically the idea.
With so many bands spanning across
the genre spectrum, it’s harder now more
than ever for the average Joe Slayer to
get his metal songs out in the music
world against these tactics of media
imaging. From a report by the Forrester
Research report, digital sales will grow
at an annual rate of 23 percent over the
next five years, and downloaded music
will bury CD sales in the year 2012. The

music industry is media-driven rather
than music-driven, and the more the
artist is plastered over the internet, the
more likely they are to sell their music.
Torrent sites and other ad-supported
downloads make it difficult for artists to
stand out when a million other bands just
like them are at the convenience of online
connection. Majors still have the right
of entry to many of the new resources
that makes them still on top. So then
the plight of the music industry rests
in its accessibility. The only force that
can safeguard us from these monster
labels is the consumer, artists, and
other investors that have power of the
necessary evils of consumerism. They’ve
formulized their plan and despite losing
big names like the Eagles, Radiohead,
and Nine Inch Nails to independent
distribution, the business is still grounded
in networking and marketing. The
only way to thwart the evolution into
revolution is by completely cutting them
off which is seemingly impossible.
The easier it is for major labels to
team up with mp3 providers and live
concert promoters, the harder it will be
to encourage unsigned artists to survive
without them. Young musicians watch
Live Nation cough up $120 million for a
10 year contract with Madonna, offering
a one stop shop for concerts, records,
merchandising, etc. and wonder how
the hell they are going to make it on their
own. So even though the corporations
smashed hard and almost took a
nosedive, they are patching themselves
up nicely allowing for more monopolistic
opportunities to take them into new
directions.

The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 21

Ralph Nader continued from 17
have free trade with a dictatorship or
oligarchy.
What you’re seeing here is
proposals to advance health and
safety in our country are put in
the legislature and then they get
a message from the U.S. Trade
Representative or the State
Department saying, “This violates
WTO.” “This labeling act for food
violates WTO, this advanced auto
safety violates WTO.” And these
trade agreements have the force of
federal law when we sign onto them.
In your book, The Seventeen
Traditions, you talk a lot about how
the corporate culture is encroaching
on the ability of families to just raise
their children in they way they want.
24 hours a day, the commercial
merchants are direct marketing to
children as young as three years
old, undermining parental authority.
Parents are more and more absent
because they are commuting and
have two jobs for their children, so
their children are sitting ducks. And
the marketing divisions of these
companies acknowledge that; they
know more about these kids when
they are alone and what their peer
group does than their parents do.
And what are they selling
these kids? Violent programming,
where violence is the solution to
problems in life—even though the
good guys win, it’s still violence.
Second, junk food and junk drinks,
predisposing them to obesity and
diabetes. Military toys for boys at
age 5, cosmetics for girls at age 7,
overmedication from age 2. This
is before they even reach 10 or 11,
where the addictive industries move
in—alcohol, drugs, tobacco, etc. So
corporations increasingly, in terms of
time, penetration, and arranging their
products and services, are raising our
children in this country.
Given all the damage that has been
done by the Bush administration, and,
22 | The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008

concurrently, seeing Al Gore speak
out against the Iraq war and global
warming, do you regret running
in 2000, and do you regret saying
that there wasn’t a dimes worth of
difference between the two?
You shouldn’t even ask that
question in that way, because what
you’re saying is—unless you’ve
asked Bush that question or other
major parties—you’re implying that
there is a second class citizenship
that pertains to small party
candidates. I know you don’t think
that way, but you are inheriting—
Well actually I do, because we
have a winner-take-all election
system, we don’t have parliamentary
representation. And I wonder why,
instead of running for president,
you didn’t militate for instant run
off voting or other changes that
would make third parties more viable
options.
We have done that, but the
Democrats have no interest in that
at all. Before I did it, it was done by
others in the national interest. But
you know enough about American
history that I don’t think you would
have urged people who voted for the
Liberty anti-slavery party to vote for
the Whigs instead of the Democrats.
Or the women’s suffrage party
for the Republicans instead of the
Democrats.
Certainly I can see that you
have the right to run, but would
you concede that nonetheless it
may have been wiser not to, and
therefore, will you run in 2008?
It’s always wise to follow your
conscience. And second, and most
importantly, you’re following prey to
the gap after Election Day and then
making your arithmetic. But the key
is the dynamic before Election Day—
how did I affect the Gore campaign?
By pushing him to the left, he was
making populist statements which
raised his polls.

Not to mention that Gore did win
the election; he believes it, I believe
it, a lot of people believe it. It was
stolen from him in a whole myriad
of ways that were documented
before, during, and after Election
Day in Florida, from Tallahassee to
the partisan 5-4 Supreme Court
decision. You would think that most
people would go after the thieves,
try to get political reform, giving
felons who have served their time
the right to vote, counting the votes
accurately so that Katherine Harris,
Jeb Bush, and all the rest of them
couldn’t have done it as they did it
again in a slightly different way in
Ohio. You don’t deny voters for third
party candidates the right to vote for
them by doing what the Democrats
did, which was get us off the ballot
through all kind of phony lawsuits
and harassment in 2004 for which
they will pay dearly in future years.
So you are planning on running
again.
No, I didn’t say that. There are
other ways to make them pay dearly.
It’s too early to say.
If you would like to elaborate on
that or anything else you plan on
working on in the near future, we
would love to hear about it.
Well we’re into starting a lot
of new groups—the forest of
democracy needs more trees. What
we need now in the student area
is much more formal and dynamic
organizations. I’ve never in 40 years
seen a desolate wasteland like on
college campuses. Especially with
the absence of a draft in the middle
of this Iraq quagmire, there’s almost
no activity to speak of—some of
them will go the marches, but it’s
nothing like it should be. If there
was a draft, if you’re part of the risk,
you’re more likely to be apart of the
solution. But a professional army
is one that elicits excessive awe,
because millions of people have

never been in the army. If you’ve
been in the army you’re not awed
at the military. But now we’ve
have more than three decades
of a professional army, mostly of
low income whites, blacks, and
Hispanics, and it is very easy
to manipulate public opinion in
terms of getting us into war when
you have that. Because then it
becomes, “don’t support Bush,
support the troops.” And Bush
wraps the troops around himself.
But getting back to the campus:
the lack of civic motivation,
the debts that the students
come out with, the little toy
called a computer which seems
to fascinate college students
excessively, and the overwhelming
inundation of cell phone chatter
and text messaging is replacing
any opportunity for reflection,
digestion, and reaction. Just
imagine, your generation is
spending minimally 50 hours a
week looking at screens, computer
screens, television screens, video
game screens. What does that
do to the brain, in a physiological
sense? That is what we have to
face up to.
You’ve got to watch out that
your diagnosis of an apathetic
generation isn’t so brilliant that it
doesn’t lead to prescription. You’ve
seen that a lot, when people’s
diagnosis are so on point that
they almost seem to be satisfied
with the diagnosis and they don’t
move to the prescription. So the
real question is: how go you get a
million college students out of 16
million socially indignant enough to
act? I stand up in front of students
and one of the first questions I ask
them is: what makes you angry?
And you know what makes them
angry? It isn’t massive world
poverty, it isn’t the Iraq War, it
isn’t corporate control of their lives
and their government and their
elections. You know what makes
them angry? Gender slurs, racial
slurs, ethnic slurs. Words, that’s

what makes them most angry
on college campuses. Now they
have to really rethink that; first of
all, why are they most angry at
words instead of deeds? Behind
all of these slurs is a pattern of
discrimination, depravation. And
second, where is their horizon?
They are supposed to be engaged
in intellectual exploration for
four years, not a trade school,
not learning widgets, entries,
accounting, balance sheets, and
computer bytes.
That is the challenge you have
to have, to move to prescription
in some way. Read Saul Alinsky’s
book Rules for Radicals, it’s only
the best book written in the 20th
century on organizing people. So
read it, get it off Amazon, and
you’ll see his technique was to go
to the perceived injustice of the
people you want to organize. You
don’t try to graft another injustice
or try to persuade them, you go
the perceived injustice and then
you work out of that. So what
are the perceived injustices of
college students? Well, one of
them is student loans, and that is
a huge racket with Sallie Mae and
that should be a raging issue on
campus. Because Sallie Mae is
corporate socialism personified—
they make the profit, any loses are
made up by Uncle Sam, and they
are vastly overcharging. When
you get out of school, you are
risk averse to civic activity. That’s
why in the 60’s, where there were
very little loans after schools, they
were much more risk-attentive and
risk assuming.

fiction

Untitled
by

Amber Maselli

T

he night sky was not black, but
grey. Yet it still seemed darker
than it had ever been before.
I laid down on the frozen lake,
not even giving a thought as to whether or
not if was thick enough to withstand the
baggage I brought upon it. The cold snow
fell down on me, caught around the fur on
my hood that was pulled tightly over my
head. I closed my eyes, as the ice flakes fell
gently on my cheeks, almost burning in the
cold now. I clenched my fists, either out of
sheer anger, or maybe the dense, frosty air.
I tucked my hands into the pockets of my
parka, and bent my knees up towards the
sky. I didn’t move after that. I barely blinked,
only occasionally to flutter free the flurries
that had landed so slightly on my eyelashes.
My eyes were dry as ever, the cold wind
blowing across them. I couldn’t produce an
ounce of moisture, not a tear would escape
out the corner of my eye, and roll softly
down my face. It could not be done. The
thought of him in the back of my mind drove
me senseless. After a while of laying on the
ice, I had no thoughts at all. My mind was
clear, I was not angry, nor sad, nor lonely. I
was solitary and empty, a shell of a human
being that used to have thoughts, empathy,
and courage. I now lay frozen physically and
mentally, on what used to be a lake full of
life, that was now just a cold sheet of ice.
The snow stopped after 2 or 3 hours, I don’t
know how long I was there, to be honest. I
finally sat up, looked around. I got to my feet,
walked across the ice, and up to the field, the
dead grass not even in sight, as the snow had
covered it all. The vertical stones meant nothing
to me anymore, I could not feel, or miss, or give
any thought at all to what they stood for and
above. I walked passed the gated site, around
the corner, and walked down the sidewalk.
Through the busy streets downtown, I didn’t
see anyone, and no one saw me. Recklessly, I
stepped down off the curb, on to the asphalt,
and made my way across the street.
The Yeti ~ Vol. 4 #3 ~ May, 2008 | 23

May 2008

The Problems with Petroleum (6) Exploring Political Inaction (15) WWW.TheyeTioNliNe.CoM Volume 4 ~ Issue 3 ~ May 2008 Published with support from Campus Progress/Center for American Progress (online at CampusProgress.org)